Surellin: I’m not sure either how contract enforcement fits in with the non-aggression principle. But I imagine it might involve everyone agreeing what the restitution will be when the contract is signed.

I.e. see comment #2 in this thread

]]>By: Rob Fisher (Surrey)http://www.samizdata.net/2013/01/forming-an-opinion-about-intellectual-property/#comment-284448
Mon, 28 Jan 2013 19:19:34 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=16500#comment-284448Surellin: I’m not sure either how contract enforcement fits in with the non-aggression principle. But I imagine it might involve everyone agreeing what the restitution will be when the contract is signed.
]]>By: Surellinhttp://www.samizdata.net/2013/01/forming-an-opinion-about-intellectual-property/#comment-284445
Mon, 28 Jan 2013 19:16:20 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=16500#comment-284445” I can attempt to punish him in some way appropriate to breaches of contract”. I’m not certain that employing the coercive power of government to imprison him or take his property in restitution is so very different from personal violence. That being said, the whole IP discussion is a muddle and I have very little fully formed opinion for one side or the other.
]]>By: Paul Markshttp://www.samizdata.net/2013/01/forming-an-opinion-about-intellectual-property/#comment-284062
Mon, 28 Jan 2013 06:41:52 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=16500#comment-284062On the Apple versus Samsung patent laws.

One of the Samsung lawyers to Californian court (pointless Samsung even appearing in California where the courts are so biased, but….)…..

“What Apple is really trying to do is patent or copyright a rectangular box with rounded corners”.

Perhaps unfair – I do not know the details.

But I do know that, in the end, such companies as Apple are going to have to compete on PRICE and QUALITY – not on how many court judgements they can get.

“Thank you for calling Soverain technical support,” says Wolanyck, if you press option 2. “If you are a current customer and have a tech support question, please call us at 1-888-884-4432, or e-mail us at support @soverain.com.” That number, like the “customer support” number on Soverain’s contact page, has been disconnected.

Soverain isn’t in the e-commerce business; it’s in the higher-margin business of filing patent lawsuits against e-commerce companies. And it’s been quite successful until now. The company’s plan to extract a patent tax of about one percent of revenue from a huge swath of online retailers was snuffed out last week by Newegg and its lawyers, who won an appeal ruling [PDF] that invalidates the three patents Soverain used to spark a vast patent war.

Theft is theft, no? Does it matter if the thief steals my car or the intellectual work I sell?

Yes, it does matter. If somebody takes a car, or a book or a CD, it is theft because you no longer have that item. If somebody copies your idea, it is not theft, because you still have everything you started with.

If I am a musician and make my money selling my music, when someone distributes my music for free to 1 million of his closest friends to enjoy, I’m losing out on sales.

That you are losing out on sales is an assumption on your part. Those 1 million people may not have bothered acquiring your music had it not been free.

He’s stealing my customers from me by giving them my work without me ending up with money in my pocket.

You don’t own your customers. Customers are people and we have long since rejected the idea that people can be property. In any case, they are not your customers, merely potential customers.

If I’m a musician or author or filmmaker or what have you, how is it an infringement on someone’s liberty to want to protect what is mine by demanding theives end up in prison?

Because what you want to be considered yours can only become yours by violating the liberty of others. It’s akin to arguing that there’s nothing wrong with slavery, because you own your slaves.

If it was a person who kicked in the door of the local bookstore and was physically handing out copies of a book, there would be no discussion on prison beaing earned, so why is electronic rights to IP so much different?

I’m surprised no-one has mentioned WikiLeaks in the context of all this; or is that a dirty word these days?

]]>By: Stevenhttp://www.samizdata.net/2013/01/forming-an-opinion-about-intellectual-property/#comment-283279
Sat, 26 Jan 2013 23:17:33 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=16500#comment-283279Which is a main point in the argument for Open Access. Why should it cost thousands and thousands per year in subscriptions and licences when the only thing the journals are supplying in the typesetting, the editing, and printing? They aren’t writing the papers (in some cases the scientist writing has to pay for the article to be published), they aren’t writing the grant proposals, they aren’t refereing or reviewing the articles, they aren’t even allowing reprint rights to the scientists writing in some instances. Not to mention the whole “scientific discoveries should be made available to everyone in the world” angle that science has.

However, the journals have two things in their favor. 1) They can claim, and rightly so, that the money the journal brings in pays for these conferences and that the organizations, who typically own the journals, depend on. Normally the journal and access is part of the dues and the money charged for access is charged to non-members like libraries which do provide those texts to anyone who walks in the front door.

2) With some journals, there is a ton of prestige attached to being published in a particular journal. Having a paper publish in Nature, or Science, or JAMA, or the Lancet is a big deal. Papers in the big journals are the most cutting edge research and/or paprdigm shifting papers. Not having those kind of major journals might mean that majorly important papers get lost in the shuffle and noticed by almost no one, but the ego question comes into play. Scientists aren’t in it for the money, but having multiple publications at that level might be the difference between getting funding or not getting funding based on track record (or getting tenure or recognition for one’s facility).

Personally, I’m angling towards Open Access, but maybe a slightly modified version like giving the journals exclusivity rights for a year or something and then allowing the work to become open to everyone. There’s a pretty good (and short!) video about the issue from PHD Comics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1KGBCY

]]>By: R7 Rockethttp://www.samizdata.net/2013/01/forming-an-opinion-about-intellectual-property/#comment-283269
Sat, 26 Jan 2013 22:58:56 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=16500#comment-283269If those scientific papers are privately funded, then Aaron Swartz is a thief. If they are publicly funded by taxpayer dollars, then Aaron Swartz has already paid for them with his taxes. Tax subsidized scientific papers should not be behind paywalls.
]]>By: Stevenhttp://www.samizdata.net/2013/01/forming-an-opinion-about-intellectual-property/#comment-283117
Sat, 26 Jan 2013 17:35:36 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=16500#comment-283117I can see the untility in the plea bargin. Someone is caught red handed, everyone knows they are going to prison because they were caught red handed, so why not allow the criminal to confess for a lighter sentence just to keep the courts from being backlogged worse than they already are (and save the taxpayers a few bucks in the process)? Still, I’m not thrilled with the shotgun approach that prosecutors use of charging a defendant with everything under the sun and then hoping the wrongly accused with plea down just to inflate stats.
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